Logic

[draggonlaady]

Not a strong point with some clients.

Obviously this did not happen today. I am home being sickly, because it's a holiday weekend and that's what you do on holidays, right? bah.

Anyway... Saw a woman a while back for a flock of canaries that weren't breeding and had a slight/passing respiratory issue that seemed to move from hen to hen.
During the discussion, I asked what she was feeding, and tried to explain that the vast majority of problems with birds (and other exotics) in captivity is long-term nutritional issues due to something imbalanced in the diet. Woman about exploded. Can't POSSIBLY be the food, she's been feeding this for years and never had a problem! Absolutely refused to harbor the idea that something in her recipe might have been overlooked or an ingredient changed when she moved from down south to here. Was offended that I would even think such a thing.

So can anyone suggest a polite way of pointing out that this is equivalent to saying "I've been smoking for 20 years, and it's never hurt me before, so the recent cough cannot possibly be related."? Sigh.

Anyway, I came back to it from a different angle later, and started her on a couple different supplements to add into the food and drinking water... sneaky sneaky and without re-stating that they'd help to make up for any vitamin/mineral lackage in her homemade diet...

And, lo and behold, a few weeks later the birds are doing much better. A couple months later, they're doing excellently, and the woman absolutely swears by the supplements, without ever admitting that the ONLY FREAKING THING we've addressed is a nutritional issue.

Comments

[evil-egg.livejournal.com]

You should be able to wire your surgery to an electrical current, as a dsciplinary measure. Just be sure to make sure you're properly grounded when you switch it on.

Client Ejookayshun

[(Anonymous)]

"I have been eating nothing but Snicker's bars for years, how could they have possibly caused me to get fat?"

Don't forget, doc, WE don't know anything about exotics that the people that have been DOING EVERYTHING WRONG for decades doesn't already know. They know their animals better than we do, because THEY'VE been "reading" up on them. We don't ever read....

Nice sneak attack, by the way.
*jnau

Re: Client Ejookayshun

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

Heh. obviously I don't know as much as the intar-web. i'm only a doctor of veterinary medicine, afterall. Not a "real" doctor.

Re: Client Ejookayshun

[(Anonymous)]

I still get a f*cking kick out of that statement: not a "real" doctor. F*ck "real" doctors!!! They're getting paid by over-charging insurance companies that don't cover jack sh*t to prescribe drugs that the drug companies pay them to prescribe while half-assing their way through a 15 min appointment in 5 minutes and rarely even examine you. It's so damn frustrating that they're the "real" doctors, but they couldn't prescribe their way through a true medical case without calling a "specialist." Meanwhile, we're paid less than half their salary to see the same case load of MULTIPLE species that can't tell us what hurts, or whether the spinning world or the tennis ball is making them vomit, while having to explain the difference to idiot owners that think the BARF diet is the cause for the vomiting!!! YOURS OR YOUR DOGS??

Re: Client Ejookayshun

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

hehe. having a rough day, dear? you never did tell me where you moved to/took a job. and how's the tyke doing?